Sawbench

I built this sawbench from some left-overs I had around the shop. I’m slowly moving into more hand tools in my work, and so this was good practice with those tools, and a good motivator to get more (LN panel saw, anyone?). Plus something about the design just says “woodworking” to me.

The top is cherry, and the base is all soft maple that I had leftover from building my workbench (I will post some photos of that too when I can clean it off).

I know some folks might balk at using “good wood” for shop appliances, but I’ve got two good reasons:

1) I don’t have a lot of wood storage in my 1/2 of the garage, so anytime I can put left-over pieces to good use, that’s a win for me.

2) I spend a lot of time in my shop, and looking at pretty wood makes me happy – so if I can do some woodworking, and look at pretty wood at the same time, that’s a double bonus for me.

My wife likes it so much, she now wants me to build another one for “indoor use” :-)

That looks great. It’s funny how a saw bench quickly becomes a workbench for toddlers. I often have to barter with my toddler to let me use it when we are both in the workshop. Mine isn’t as attractive and looks a little more bench-like. I was concerned about hitting splayed legs with my saw while ripping, so I made mine without splaying the legs. I thought I would be sacrificing stability by not splaying the legs, but that turned out to not be the case. I guess when it is only 18” high, the splay is unnecessary. Here’s my saw bench.

Thanks swirt – your bench may not look so pretty, but you do have that slick way of using a clamp with it. My 3-year old desperately wants to work at my “real” bench, so he’s lately taken to using the saw-bench as a stool – which puts him at just about the right height for my 33” workbench.